Ambulation is quite common in modern medical treatment regimens. lt is quite common for a patient who has undergone major surgery to be strongly encouraged to get out of bed and walk as much as possible as soon as possible.
However, many such patients require catheterization, or IV set-ups. Therefore, such ambulation, while extremely desirable, may be difficult due to the need for such tubes as are associated with catheters, IV's and the like. It is not uncommon in a hospital to see a patient walking with tubes attaching him to bottles and containers supported on a stand or cart that must be pulled or pushed along with such patient as he walks. Unless caution is exercised, these tubes can become kinked thereby causing the patient discomfort and possibly interfering with the operation of the fluid systems associated with the kinked tube. This clearly is an undesirable situation and patients and health care professionals must be constantly aware of the tubes to avoid such a situation.
While the kinking of catheter and IV tubes is quite undesirable, and potentially harmful, the kinking of an oxygen tube is totally unacceptable. Many patients, both ambulatory and bedridden, require oxygen, and such oxygen is provided via flexible tubes and hoses. An ambulatory patient may cause the oxygen hose to kink, and even a bedridden patient who occasionally moves can create an oxygen-hose kinking situation. The more active the patient, the greater the possibility of oxygen-hose kinking situations arising.
The just-mentioned situation is exacerbated by patients who are otherwise well, but who suffer from some respiratory problem, such as emphysema or the like, that requires an otherwise well and mobile patient to have oxygen-hoses. Such a patient is quite active and the potential for an oxygen-hose kinking situation is concomitantly increased. Such people often are required to pull the hoses over their heads to untwist such hoses, an obviously undesirable situation.
Accordingly, there is need for a device that is adapted for use with medical fluid systems, such as oxygen-supply systems, and which prevents, or at least, inhibits, the flexible hoses associated with such systems from kinking.